NFDW President Cindy Jenks

 

Action Alert      May 11, 2021

 

One pillar of President Bidens’ American Family Plan is to expand universal Pre-K.  A new study has presented evidence that early childhood education does help the boys and girls to mature with social and emotional intelligence.  The New York Times is reporting:

“But test scores are mostly a means, not an end. More important than the scores are concrete measures of a student’s well-being. And by those measures, the students who won the lottery fared substantially better than those who lost it.

The winners were less likely to be suspended in high school and less likely to be sentenced to juvenile incarceration. Nearly 70 percent of lottery winners graduated from high school, compared with 64 percent of lottery losers, which is a substantial difference for two otherwise similar groups. The winners were also more likely to take the S.A.T., to enroll in college and — though the evidence is incomplete, because of the students’ age — to graduate from college.

These positive effects were similar across racial groups and income groups.  They also spanned both sexes, with larger effects for both sexes, with larger effects for boys than girls.   The authors note that their findings are consistent with several other studies, which also found that early education had a bigger effect on long-term outcomes than short-term metrics.”

 

While the jury is still out on whether Pre-K helps a student have better grades,

NFDW can embrace the data that shows those students that participated in

Early education stayed in school, graduated high school and continued with

some form of higher education, including technology or a skilled trade and this is a

primary importance.        

 

NFDW members are urged to help publicize the value of universal Pre-K.

Actively support President Biden’s plan because our children will benefit from this

opportunity.